“There’s the bot now.”Rhett rubbed his palms together, pausing as Elodie extended a trembling hand and placed the earmuffs on the table.“You don’t have to be scared.”
“I’m not scared.”She picked at the edges of her short fingernails.“It’s just that my career, everything I’ve worked for and believe in, is about protecting and maintaining life.Guns serve no purpose but to end it.”She dragged her tongue across dry lips.“I don’t likethem.”
“Gah, El, you’re being such a girl about the whole thing.”
There it was again.Her gender used as a way to patronize.Disliking guns had nothing to do with being a woman and everything to do with what she stood for and how she felt.Why couldn’t he seethat?
She stiffened.“It really doesn’t have anything to dowith—”
“You know, we had that talk this morning and I realized that I was being kind of stuck in my ways, so I come surprise you at your house, but you weren’t happy I was there, and then I bring you out here—a place that civilians aren’t even allowed—and you’re totally unappreciative.I don’t know what to do with you, Elodie.”
She hugged her arms around her middle.All of that was true.She hadn’t realized she was being ungrateful, but now that he’d said it...
Tears pricked her eyes.“I’m sorry.I’m not trying to be difficult.”
Her relationship would be easier if she would stop telling Rhett she wanted something and then hate it when he delivered.
“El, hey, don’t be like that.I don’t want you to cry.”Rhett scratched the back of his head.“How about this?I’ll use your gun, finish up all the ammo the bot brought, then I’ll take you back home.You can clean yourself up and later tonight we can meet up in VR like we usually do.”
She brushed away a tear and nodded.
Rhett hooked his thumb through his belt loop.“Yeah, maybe we could go to ancient Rome and dress up in those bedsheets you like to nerd out in.”
“Togas.”She chuckled.
“Whatever.”Bullets tinkled like bells as Rhett arranged the boxes of ammo on the table.“It’s not my favorite time period, but you got a kick out of it last time wewent.”
It wasn’t anyone’s favorite time period.Most citizens hung out in futuristic VR realms, but Elodie was a sucker for the past.It also didn’t hurt that the historic realms were sparsely populated.
“What about Paris?”She tingled with the thought.
He shrugged.“Whatever my girl wants, shegets.”
A small, muffled part of her told her that was far from the truth, but she stuffed the voice back into the trenches of hermind.
“It’s the city of love,” she said with a sigh.“Or it was at one point.”
Rhett lined up his shot, relaxed, and then lined it up again.“What is that supposed tomean?”
“It’s romantic.”Elodie traced the stitching along her collar.“Couples used to go there and climb the stairs of the Eiffel Tower or watch it twinkling at night.They’d evenkiss,” she whispered.“I’m pretty sure that’s where that termFrench kissingcamefrom.”
“See, that kind of stuff is what was wrong with people from the past.”Rhett adjusted the earmuffs around his thick neck.“They were all over each other, touching and hugging, smashed together traveling to work and wherever else.And since that apparently wasn’t bad enough, they had to rub their disgusting, wet mouth holes all over each other too.They were out of control and practically begging to be wiped out.”He slid Elodie’s earmuffs closer to her.
Elodie pressed the squishy muffs against her ears and crossed back over the yellow line, flinching at the first round of gun blasts.
She wasn’t asking to kiss.She didn’t understand the need any more than Rhett and was fully aware of the risks involved.Mixing her saliva with Rhett’s could very well spawn another pandemic and wipe out Westfall.All Elodie wanted was a nice, romantic adventure that would assure their arrival toromancia-landia, and Paris seemed like a great place to start.
“Survive that, you monster fuckers!”Rhett roared over the cracks of gunfire.
Elodie grimaced.
Maybe Rhett wasn’t built for romance.
XX
Sparkman swung her legs over the edge of the bed.Her boots hit the ground before her alarm had a chance to sound.She fastened the belt yawning open like the mouth of asingle-toothedsnake above her hips before pressing her fists together, each knuckle cracking.Herstrawberry-blondbraid brushed her shoulder blades as she stretched her neck, then her arms, and then herlegs.
She always slept dressed.Ready to go.Ready for anything.
